


the principle of multiple reflection

by nirav



Series: shadowboxing with giants [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 09:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13655889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: Coined in 1817 by Scottish inventor David Brewster, "kaleidoscope" is derived from the Ancient Greek καλός (kalos), "beautiful, beauty", εἶδος (eidos), "that which is seen: form, shape" and σκοπέω(skopeō), "to look to, to examine", hence "observation of beautiful forms."[or: alex is reckless and sam's displeased response is to bemore recklessin helping her.  because they're both idiots.]





	the principle of multiple reflection

 

 

 

 _talked ourselves to death_  
_never saying what i wanted_  
_saying what i needed_  
_i pushed you to the edge_  
_never knowing what i wanted_  
_knowing what i needed you to say_

 

* * *

 

 

It happens when Kara is on the other side of the country.  Of course it does.  Of course there’s an alien attack on National City, and of course it happens when Kara’s helping Superman in Metropolis, and of course Alex is point on the team tackling the threat.

It’s a Thursday afternoon in November, cold enough for frost to cover the windshield of the cars, and they’re halfway home from Ruby’s school, Lena driving and Sam in the passenger’s seat and Ruby singing too-loudly from the backseat, when the ground shakes and cars skid to a halt.

“What the hell,” she mumbles, squinting forward at the plume of smoke emanating from the waterfront.

“What happened?” Ruby moves to unbuckle her seat belt and climb out, and Sam reaches out at inhuman speed to hold her in place.  

“Stay in the car,” she says, still staring at the smoke.  She climbs out of the car, ignoring Lena calling after her and weaving up through the mass of stopped cars towards the skyline and the smoke.  Someone stumbles out of their car, phone in hand, news alert already blaring, and Sam peers over their shoulder at the helicopter footage of some enormous mantis-like alien throwing cars at a swarm of armored black-clad agents.  Sam’s chest goes cold when the camera zooms in and there’s a flash of a familiar jawline and glare from under a helmet.  She yanks the phone out of the man’s hands, shouldering off his protest, just in time to see Alex get thrown twenty feet into the side of a building.

“Mom?”  

It’s Ruby, disobeying her as always, Lena’s arm locked around her shoulders and forehead creased with concern.  

“Sam,” Lena says softly, enough that no one else will hear her, even if Sam can.  

“Where’s Kara?”

“Metropolis,” Lena says, still soft, still quiet, restrained.  She’s watching Sam, careful, guarded, analytical, but Ruby’s got the same look on her face that she wore for the first six months Sam was home, as if she’s waiting for something to snap, and something does.

“Get in the car,” Sam says sharply, shoving the phone back to its rightful owner and half-carrying Ruby back to the car.

“What--”

“Stay in the car, Ruby” Sam grinds out, one hand digging holes into the hood of Lena’s car.  Ruby jerks back and nods, shaking, as she scrambles back into the car.  “Take care of her.”

“Sam, your powers aren’t strong enough, you need to--”

Sam ignores her, staring instead down at the bracelets on her wrists, flashing green even in the daylight, and with one deep breath, crushes first one, and then the other, in her hands.  The pieces fall to the ground and her hands shake under the extra exposure to kryptonite for a short moment, and then strength unwinds in her shoulders, her legs, her hands.  

“Sam, wait!”  

Sam glares at her, limbs trembling with growing strength as the sunlight, finally uninhibited by kryptonite, fills her muscles with power.

“Put your hood up,” Lena says quietly.  “Just--try to keep your face hidden.  Be careful.”

Sam breathes in and pulls her coat’s hood up, nods to the both of them, and takes off at a sprint.  Buildings and people blur around her, and it’s a solid six miles to the waterfront, but she makes it in less than a minute, blowing past a mess of police officers and DEO agents and overturned cars.  Alex and a team of three other agents, battered and damaged, are holding the alien off as best they can with their backs against the side of a building.

Sam skids to a stop, momentum carrying her past Alex’s team and sending her slamming into an overturned car to stop.  The whole car screeches across twenty feet of damaged asphalt and the sound drags the attention of the attacking alien away from Alex’s team for a moment.  It’s enough, for just a moment, and Alex’s familiar voice cuts through the air, ordering her team to retreat, that reinforcements are on the way.  

Sam leaps over, legs uncoiling and sending her flying through the air across the better part of a city block, and lands at Alex’s side as she’s shoving her teammates’ hands off and sending them away.  One arm is cradled against her chest, sleeve ripped and an unnatural lump raising from her wrist, all of her weight on one leg, and Sam’s teeth grind together.

“Sam, what--” It comes out a sharp hiss of sound, Alex’s jaw too tight against the pain for her to speak properly.  “Watch out!”

Sam turns around just in time to see half of a car hurtling through the air at them, and she whirls back to crouch over Alex and prays that she’s as strong as she thinks she is.  The car slams into her back and her limbs shake under the impact, breath forced out of her lungs in a strangled cry, but it falls away behind her, leaving Alex untouched.  Alex stares up at her, eyes wide and locked onto hers, as debris crumbles and falls off her back.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Alex grinds out.  “You have to--”

Sam ignores her, taking the opportunity to turn back and heft the car she’d just deflected so she can hurl it back at the alien.  Her aim is off and it comes up short, hitting the asphalt and bouncing once before it slams into what presumably is the alien’s head.  It stuns it enough for Sam to gather Alex up into her arms and sprint away from the fight, leaving the second DEO team rappelling in to handle it.  

“Sam,” Alex says weakly.  “You can’t be here.”

Sam settles her softly down on the curb half a block from the medical teams already treating the other injured.  

“Sam,” Alex says again, her name coming out on the heels of a groan.  “What-- why are you--”

“You’re hurt.”  Sam crouches down in front of her, uncertain fingers reaching carefully for Alex’s arm.  

“What happened to your inhibitors?”

“I took them off.”  She fumbles carefully with the buckle on Alex’s helmet, lifting it off her head with shaking hands and moving to the straps on her  vest.  “You need to take this off, it’s so heavy, you need-”

“Sam,” Alex says, her voice tight.  “You need to leave.”

It’s enough to put a halt to Sam’s uncertain hands, an ache flashing through her stomach, and she yanks her hands back from Alex’s body.

“There are reporters everywhere,” Alex says.  “They can’t-- you have to get out of here before they figure out who you are.  Keep the hood up, go to the DEO, I’ll meet you there.”   She reaches out with her uninjured hand and grips the back of Sam’s neck, locking her in place with desperate wide eyes.  “ _Please,_ Sam, don’t let them see you here.  They’ll never leave you or Ruby alone if they know what you can do.”

It’s only the sound of Ruby’s name that prods her to action, softly pulling Alex’s fingers from her neck and holding them for a careful moment before she finally blinks away from Alex’s wide eyes and nods.  She glances over her shoulder to where a collection of ambulances have arrived and grips Alex’s hand with both of hers for a beat more before she sprints off, blurring past buildings and people until she’s found an empty street.

Her coat is ruined, ripped across the back, and she shrugs out of it, shoves it into a trashcan.  Her clothes are covered in concrete dust, half of the buttons on her shirt and jacket ripped off, and her phone, still in her back pocket, is destroyed, crushed to almost nothing from the impact of the car.  With a groan, she wraps her arms around herself, hiding the damage to her clothes as best she can, and sets off as fast as she can without running.

 

* * *

 

“Ms. Arias.” J’onn’s waiting for her when she makes it to the DEO, hands linked behind his back and mouth turned down.

“I know,” she mumbles.  “I just--I don’t know.”  She rubs at her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt and dust across her skin.  “Can you yell at me later?”

“Oh, I’m not going to be the one yelling at you.”  The frown breaks enough to turn into something almost resembling a smile.  “I’ll give you the paperwork you have to fill out as a civilian involved in an agency incident, but Alex is going to be the one who yells at you and you know it.”

“So much worse,” Sam says with a groan.  “Where is she?”

“Med bay,” he says with a jerk of one thumb over his shoulder.  “You know the way.”  

Sam mumbles out her thanks and shuffles towards the medical wing, arms wrapped around her stomach and head down.  

“Hey!” It’s Winn, chasing after her and skidding to a stop at her side.  “Sorry, I mean-- here,” he adds, holding out another set of inhibitors.  “It’s the older version, so it’s not fine tuned, but I can get you the newer ones fixed up--”

“Thanks,” she says quietly.  She stares down at the inhibitors in her hands, fingers curling carefully around them.  She shoves them into the pocket of her blazer and finds something of a smile to offer him.  He smiles, like he always does, and disappears back towards his station, leaving Sam to pick her way through the crowded medical bay until she finds the room Alex is in.

She stops outside of the door, turning the inhibitors over and over in her hands.  It’s the first set she had, the ones that left her strong but vulnerable, the days when her muscles could punch through concrete but her bones couldn’t handle the impact.  She clicks first one, then the other, over her wrists, and closes her eyes against the familiar wave of nausea, the way her limbs go heavy and sluggish, the extra effort it takes to pull air into her lungs.

Her body adjusts, slowly, and she opens her eyes and takes a deep breath before knocking on the door.

“Hey.”  Alex doesn’t move from her spot on the medical bed.  Her left arm is in a splint, her knee wrapped and iced.  

“Hi.”  Sam shuts the door behind her and stays pressed back against it, keeping as much distance as she can.  “How’s your--”

“You can’t do things like that,” Alex says, quiet and sharp.  “You _can’t_.  You could have been killed, someone could have seen you--”

“You were hurt,” Sam says carefully.  “I wanted to--”

“To what?” Alex sits up straighter, shaking her hair out of her eyes.  “Sam, you ran across National City in broad daylight and threw a _car_ at an alien, surrounded by reporters.”

“You were in danger,” Sam says.  She pushes her hands into her pockets, ignoring the way the inhibitors have left her body aching and sore after the fight.  “I saw you get thrown into a building.  I had to do something.”

“Do you want to be a hero, Sam?” Alex snaps.  “Do you want to put on a cape and go do what Kara does?  Lie to everyone in your life, leave your daughter alone when you’re off gallivanting around fighting aliens and bank robbers?”

“That’s not--”

“You need to be _careful_ ,” Alex says, her voice strangled and her uninjured hand gripping tight to the edge of the bed.  “God, Sam, what if someone had seen your face?  You’re already recognizable just because of L Corp, and then you’re out in the middle of the afternoon throwing around cars?  If they’d identified you then it wouldn’t have taken long at all for them to get to Ruby to get to you.”

“I know!” Sam says, too loud and too much.  “You think I don’t know that?”

“Then you need to _act_ like it!”

“Stop talking about what I need,” Sam throws back.  “God, I’m so fucking tired of talking about what I need.  All anyone’s talked to me about in the last two years is what I need to get over Reign, what I need to keep my powers under control, what I need to get my life back. I’m tired of talking about what I _need_.”

“Sam,” Alex says softly.  “I’m just worried about you.”  She pauses, fingers flexing and releasing and gripping again at the edge of the bed, and pulls in a deep breath.  “It would destroy Ruby to lose you again.”

“And what about what it would do to me if anything happened to you?” A laugh makes it way out past her lips, sharp and jagged and not at all amused, and Sam pushes her hands through her hair.  “I’m not some hero, I don’t want to be one, but that doesn’t mean I’m just going to sit there when you’re in danger.”

“Sam,” Alex says again, her voice wavering.  

“I know what I need, Alex.”  Sam plucks at the inhibitors on her wrists, letting out another quiet laugh.  “I need to keep my kid safe, to wear these inhibitors for the rest of my life, to live my life with Ruby and just _be_.  But there has to be more to life than just what I need.  I’m tired of just focusing on what I need to do to deal with what happened.”

Alex stays quiet, her mouth pressed into a thin line and jaw clenched visibly.  Sam sucks in a deep breath, holds it in lungs that are working overtime to compensate for the kryptonite inhibitors, lets it out.  

“What are you saying, exactly?” Alex says after a long moment.

“I’m saying that I don’t want to talk about what I need anymore,” Sam says, voice small and hands uncertain even as she pushes ahead.  “I’m tired of talking about what I need to do.  Can’t it be about what I want instead of what I need?”

“Okay,” Alex says slowly.  “I didn’t know-- what do you want?”

“What do I want?” Sam blow out a long breath, pacing the length of the small room and back again, over and over.  “I want to go to my kid’s soccer games, and do my job, and yell at Lena because she always forgets to eat dinner when she’s working, and have stupid movie nights with my kid, and go for drinks with my friends, and drop Ruby off at college and cry for a week.”  

“You’re going to do all that,” Alex says.  “Really, you are.  You’ve done something incredible already, coming back after what happened, and you’re going to get to do all of that--”

“I want all of it with you,” Sam says over her, and Alex’s mouth snaps shut with a click.  Sam slumps down onto the bed by Alex’s feet and drops her head into her hands, scrubbing at her face with her palms.  “When my mom threw me out, and Ruby’s father didn’t want anything to do with me, I just decided, then and there.  It was going to be me and her against the world.  And that’s how it’s always been, you know?  There was never anyone else I wanted to have in my life.  

“And then-- God, Alex, you just rolled in and saved my life, over and over again, and helping Ruby with her homework, and going grocery shopping for us, and I just-- want this.  And seeing you almost getting killed today just--something snapped.   I lost more than a year of my life already and I wasn’t going to lose anything else, especially not you.”

Alex stares at her from the other end of the bed, mouth hanging open and eyes blinking slowly.  “You-- really?”

Sam shrugs and flails her hands out with a sigh.  “Yep.”

“Sam, I,” Alex starts.  She pauses and pushes herself to sit up straighter with her good arm.  “I thought you were just...not interested.  In me.  Maybe anyone, but definitely not me.”

“You what?”  It’s enough to shake Sam out of her embarrassment, hands going from nervous fidgeting to hanging at her sides.  “Why would you think that?”

“Because I asked you out the day you left the DEO and then you never wanted to actually go out?  Because you’ve been through massive trauma and I was part of that and I figured you didn’t want that to cross into your love life?”

“Oh, God,” Sam mutters.  “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.  Ever.”  She pushes back up to pacing again, hands on her hips and shoulders back, the shift to authoritative accented by her suit jacket and barely undermined at all by the dust and dirt all over her.  “That makes no sense!  I see you every single day!  We talk all the time!  You have keys to my house and know the names of everyone on Ruby’s soccer team and how to make that weird mac and cheese concoction she insists on eating and we have a bottle of that gross French whiskey that tastes like burned marshmallows for you!”

“It’s not gross,” Alex says, nose wrinkling. “And I thought you’d just--”

“What, decided that because everyone abandoned me when I was sixteen and pregnant and I had to do everything alone and then lost almost two years of my life because I had an alien weapon of mass destruction in my head I’d just never look twice at the possibility of a relationship with someone?” Sam pauses in her pacing and presses her lips together for a long second. “Okay, fine, can’t argue with that.”

“Gee, thanks,” Alex says drily.  She pulls her injured leg around so she can sit on the side of the bed and reaches out hesitantly for Sam’s hand.  Sam moves automatically, feet carrying her into Alex’s orbit and hand curling into hers.  “I didn’t know.”

“Some genius superagent you are,” Sam grumbles.  One side of her mouth tilts upwards anyways, and Alex rolls her eyes.    

“Could say the same thing about you, you know.  Youngest person in the Fortune-50 c-suite by twenty years and you can’t tell that some grubby federal agent has been making heart eyes at you for two years.”  

Sam rolls her eyes, scoffing.  She pulls her hand free and lifts Alex’s injured arm in both hands, fingers ghosting over the splint from her wrist to her elbow and forehead creasing with her frown.  “How bad?”

“Not, all things being equal,” Alex says.  Her head tilts to one side, as it does, dipping down to try and catch Sam’s eye and pull her focus away from the fracture in her arm.  “Small clean fracture, no surgery required.  Should be fine in a few weeks.”

Sam finally looks up, one eyebrow lifting, and Alex huffs out a sigh.  “Few months,” she amends.  

“Kara’s gonna shit a brick, you know,” Sam says.  Alex groans, head dropping forward to Sam’s shoulder, and Sam only hesitates for a few seconds before her hand curls around the back of Alex’s head, fingers tangling into her hair gently.  

“She always gets so cranky when I--”

As if summoned, the door flies open behind them and Kara bursts in with a yell of “Alex!”

She stumbles to a halt in the middle of the room, taking in the two of them clearing their throats and pushing away from each other, Sam’s hands moving from her pockets to her hips to her hair to her pockets again.

“Wait,” Kara says slowly, pointing first at Alex, then at Sam, back and forth.  Her eyes go wide, followed by her smile.  “Finally!  I thought you were never going to--”

“Not another word,” Alex says, pointing sharply back at Kara.  “Nothing from you.”

Kara mimes zipping her mouth shut, only to manage barely three seconds before squealing and bolting across the room to hug Sam, then Alex.  Alex groans at the jostling to her arm, and Kara snaps immediately back into her anger, glaring down at her.

“You!  There’s no _way_ you should have tried to take that one by yourself.”

“It wasn’t by myself, I had a whole team,” Alex mutters, even as she dutifully presents her arm for Kara to scan.  “Not my fault it was a _cranky_ alien and felt the need to smash a gas line.”

Sam hums her own disapproval from the other side of the room, arms folded and matching Kara’s glare, and Alex huffs out a sigh.  “Seriously?  Both of you?”

“Just wait til Ruby sees you,” Sam says with a shrug.  “You haven’t seen her pout until you’ve seen her pout because you scared her.”

The doctor reappears in the doorway.  “Agent Danvers, time for your cast.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alex mumbles.  She yanks the ice pack away from her knee and hobbles out of the room, pausing only to glare back at the both of them before disappearing.

“J’onn told me what you did,” Kara says, not looking away from the door Alex had left through.  She pivots to lean against the bed Alex had vacated, hands clasped in front of her, and Sam lets out a sigh.  

“I already got the disappointed glare from him and the yelling from Alex,” she says.  “Can we skip the lectures?”

“Do you want to do what I do?” Kara says, tugging at her cape absently.  

“What?”

“From what I hear, you were the reason the tac team was able to subdue the hostile,” Kara says.  “Which isn’t easy.  You must have taken the inhibitors off, which is fine, but if you want to do this--”

“I don’t,” Sam rushes out.  “I really don’t.  I just-- want to live my life, and take care of my kid, and not be any more of a part of this than I already have.”  She tugs gently at one of the inhibitors.  

“I was just going to say that if you wanted to, I could help you,” Kara says with a shrug.  “But you don’t have to, just because you have powers.”  She shrugs again, wider and with a small smile.  “I would have tried to talk you out of it.  You’ve got enough on your plate without adding fighting crime to the list.”  

Kara folds her arms over her chest, wiggling more comfortably back against the edge of the bed.  “You also know that no one expects you to, right?”

“What?”

“Just because you have powers like mine.”  Kara gestures towards the inhibitors on Sam’s wrist, hand coming close enough for flecks of green to flash on her fingertips.  Sam pulls her hands back behind her back and Kara shakes her hand out with a frown, until the brush of kryptonite fades.  “It doesn’t mean you have to do what I do.  Even if you hadn’t been through everything you did, you wouldn’t have some responsibility to go out and do what I do.”

“What kind of person does it make me if I don’t, though?”

“A good one,” Kara says with a smile and a tilt to her head, so similar to Alex.  “Sam, the fact that you can throw a car or catch bullets doesn’t mean you _have_ to to be considered a good person.  You’re raising a daughter, and running a company that’s changing the world for the better.  You’ve never owed the world anything, but even if you did, you’re way ahead of the curve without putting on a costume and flying around to punch bad people.”

“Thank you,” Sam mumbles.  “I-- didn’t know I needed to hear that, but I did.”

“What are friends for?” Kara says.  “Now that we’ve cleared that up, though.”  She claps her hands together and grins, too wide and too knowing, and Sam groans.  

“Can we not?”

“Oh, you’re about to tell me _everything_ , lady.”

 

* * *

 

By the time another hour’s gone by and Alex’s cast has been set, Kara’s interrogated Sam, Sam’s dodged as much of it as possible by hunting down the paperwork J’onn promised her, and Lena and Ruby have shown up to also glare at her.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the one getting glared at?” Sam mutters at Ruby, who’s still got her arms folded over her chest and a disapproving stare painted across her face.

“I’m not mad, I’m disappointed,” Ruby says with a sniff, and Sam groans when Winn high-fives Ruby and Lena laughs unreservedly at her.

“See if I care,” Sam says with a sniff of her own, even as she presses a kiss to the top of Ruby’s head on her way to the locker rooms to find Alex.  She cuts through the medical wing, making her way slowly through the familiar hallways, fingers brushing along the wall outside the room she’d been in after the surgery to correct her poorly-healed knee post-Reign, and again after she’d broken her hand punching through concrete while working with Kara to rein in her powers once.  Alex had been the one to place her IV each time, talking Sam through it with news of Ruby and the outside world until the lines were set.

“Hey there.”  Sam leans in the doorway to the locker room, hands in her pockets, and raises an eyebrow at Alex, who’s struggling determinedly to tie her shoes with one hand in a cast.  “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Har har,” Alex says with a grumble.  “Shouldn’t you be home by now?”

“Lena brought Ruby by,” Sam says.  “We’d had a meeting off site and she came with me to pick her up from school before the-- they came to see how you were, and you know how it always goes.  Ruby gets within six feet of Winn’s computer toys and they’re all inseparable.”

Alex curses at her shoelaces, and Sam moves from the doorway, one hand trailing over Alex’s shoulder until she can kneel in front of her.  A token protest builds on Alex’s lips; she swallows it when Sam glances up at her with eyes that offer no room for argument.  

“Of course today’s the day you decided to go casual instead of with your big gay boots,” Sam says, straightening the laces from Alex’s mangling attempts.  

“My boots aren’t _gay_ ,” Alex says with a huff.  “You’re the one in the gay pantsuit.”

“Lena’s the only one who can get away with running a company in dresses like that.”  Sam finishes the the second shoe with a flourish.  “Voila.  Perfect double-knot, thank you very much.”  

“I’m forever grateful,” Alex deadpans.  She coughs into the emptiness of the room when Sam’s hands fall gently onto her knees, mapping the lines of the Ace bandage wrapped around one of them.  “We kind of got interrupted earlier.”

“Your sister has impeccable timing, as always,” Sam says, thumbs moving softly back forth across Alex’s knees.

“So.  We’re doing this?” Alex doesn’t look up from Sam’s hands.  

“If you think you’re up for dealing with a genetically modified alien single mom with a too-smart teenager and way too much work to do.”

“I think I can handle the challenge, yeah.”  Alex’s uninjured hand finds the line of Sam’s arm, following up along her shoulder and neck to the back of her head, pulling until Sam sits up on her knees enough to kiss her.  Sam’s hands move from Alex’s knees to the bench on either side of her so she can lean into the kiss, fingers digging into the wood.   

It’s interrupted by Sam yawning suddenly, wide enough to draw a laugh out of Alex, and Sam slaps a hand over her mouth when another yawn overtakes her.

“Sorry,” she mumbles past her hand.  “It’s the, y’know.”  She waves towards the inhibitors.  “The old ones make me tired.”

“I’m sure it has nothing to do with you throwing cars around or anything like that,” Alex says.  “Not at all.”

“Shut up,” Sam says, slapping at Alex’s shoulder even as she yawns again, pushing her way up to her feet and offering a hand to Alex, who pushes up onto her toes to press another kiss to Sam’s mouth.

“Have you always been this tall?”

“Have you always been this short?” Sam throws back.  She toes out of her heels to stand barefoot in front of Alex, eyebrows and chin up.  “Is that better?”

“Little bit,” Alex says.  “Easier to reach.”  She pulls on the lapel of Sam’s jacket so she can kiss her again, lips moving slowly with hers.  

“I can just never wear heels again, I guess,” Sam mumbles into the kiss, only to grunt when Alex slaps her arm.

“Definitely don’t do that.”  Alex pulls back to point at her sternly.  “The whole power suit thing is super attractive.”  She plucks at the edge of Sam’s jacket again.

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”  Alex nods and pulls again, leaning up, only to be interrupted by a loud knocking on the locker room door.

“I’m coming in!” Kara bellows from the other side, a split second before the door bursts open.  She bounces into the room, freshly changed into jeans and a sweater, followed by Ruby and Lena.

“Are you okay?” Ruby rushes over to Alex’s side, reaching for her broken arm carefully.  “Is it broken?”

“Like barely,” Alex says with an eyeroll.  “Still healthy enough to kick your butt at Mario Kart.”

“You wish,” Ruby throws back.  She glances over at Sam, who’s pulling her shoes back on, and then back to Alex, to Kara’s too-wide grin and Lena’s more subtle but no less smug smile. “Why does everyone look so weird?”

“It’s nothing,” Sam says quickly, before Kara can blurt anything out.  “But actually, I need to go clean up, and I have more work to do, so--”

“Ruby, what do you think about dinner at my place?” Lena says, settling an arm over her shoulders.  “We’ll order anything you want.  Since your mom’s _definitely_ in trouble with you, I’d say you get to eat all the dessert she doesn’t let you have.”

“Deal,” Ruby rushes out.  She sticks her tongue out at Sam, who rolls her eyes and returns the favor, throwing her hands up.  

“I can’t believe you two are ganging up on me now,” she mutters.  “Go, spoil my child.  See if I care.”

She pulls Ruby into a hug anyways, squeezing tight for a long moment and breathing in deeply.  She smells like public school and processed sugar and not at all like the concrete dust and blood and sweat that’s been following Sam all afternoon.  “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Ruby mumbles into her shoulder.  She pops free and bounces over to Lena, who follows her out of the locker room, pausing only to grab Kara by the wrist and pull her out as well.  She winks over her shoulder at the two of them, and Alex clears her throat loudly.

“We’re never going to live this down,” she says.  

“Definitely not,” Sam says.  She straightens her jacket and then her shoulders, pulling up to her full height, and offers a hand to Alex.  “Want to blow this popsicle stand?”

“Yeah,” Alex says, lips curling up into a grin and fingers sliding neatly between Sam’s.  “Let’s get out of here.”

 

* * *

 

 _so do you want to turn it around?_  
_and do you want to show me how?_  
_you are a kaleidoscope_  
_you are a kaleidoscope_

 

 

 


End file.
